Daniel Hannan Explains Why Socialism Does Not Work

Having explained how well socialism worked in France and in Venezuela, why socialism alway fails; and exposing the "costs" of socialism around the world, we leave it to the much more erudite UKIP member Daniel Hannan to explain why socialism does not work. Hannan, simply put, explains why socialism (using force to make individuals comply with planners plans) doesn't produce the results the planners planned. As Austrian Addict notes, socialists don't like the spontaneous order that results when individuals are free to make decisions on what they produce, consume, and exchange. The only reason central planners think that socialism hasn't worked is because it hasn’t been tried by the right people, namely them.

The only thing that x thousand years of human existience works is Oligrachism, they've won every century so far.... the bloodshed to even things out has involved to many innocents, so the oligarchs even then win again. They are our cockroaches, unkillable in essence. Kill one another one grows to fill its place.......

Socialism doesn't work in a modern technological world because it developed to promote survival in a hunter-gatherer society, one almost completely devoid of innovation and property. As such, socialism has little use for property rights, stifles innovation, and tends to promote the status quo economically. The Soviet Union is a good past example and currently, the elites using socialist practices in banking and finance to increase their control of the economy.

Fascism fares a little better. Being a derivative of the hunter-gatherer culture but with the additional influences of sedentism, positive-sum economics, specialization of labor, and rudimentary property rights, it is more conducive to progress and innovation. Its failure is that generally the state is the greatest beneficiary of its successes.

Of course, either of these two systems can be improved by increasing the freedom of individuals and decreasing control by governments. All the way to no government at all.

'America' isn't socialist (unless you're referring to South America - in which case... fair enough, a lot of the countries in South America are fairly socialist). But how many industries are owned by the state in North America?

The USA is fascist. The 'government' tightly regulate industry, whose owners then buy off the politicians and regulators 'regulating' them. As Robert Higgs described it, in the West we have 'Participatory Fascism' - it's a fascist oligarchy, but the peons are periodically allowed to vote for a selection of puppets from an oligarchy-approved list. Occasionally, a politician will wander off the reservation... but they are unlikely to have been able to advance up the slippery pole unless they had serious character flaws that allow them to be taken down at a moment's notice by the oligarchy's attack dogs, the MSM.

It's a pretty neat system, in that the vast majority of the citizenry have no idea they are either just bought-off vote machines or tax/fiat serfs.

Obama started his political career as a socialist. One who does not approve the choices individuals make when they are allowed to make their own decisions. So, we will impose decisions upon you and force you into mold. This "protect the parasite" mentality has existed for a long time.

However, Obama was quickly schooled in Fascism and learn that his survival is really about the cozy relationships with the people who really run the world. He embraced the new game. You know that clown didn't write "obamacare". He too is a puppet of the real rule makers now (fascist) but clings tightly to his socialist roots of envy and spite. He realizes, that even after being a president he's not really qualified for any productive job....this eats away at his fabric...the more it eats away at him, the more insistent he is that we take from those who produce and handout to those who don't. (socialist)

You're both wrong. It's fascist at the top and socialist at the bottom. Fascism for the 1 percent who own the corporations and who are joined at the hip to the govt. It's all financed by socialism of the masses who pay for all the excess and failures of those at the top.

My argument for quite some time is that a percentage of our society has been socialist for a long while, with another substantial percentage remaining capitalist/free market.

The "government check, " and this includes government workers often overblown salaries and benefits, or welfare recipients, past the point of hard actual need or reasonableness of pay, is the "bread and circuses," or more acurately, the monetary heroin of our time.

The amount paid above "hard actual need" and "reasonableness of pay" is paid by that other demonized percentage - the capitalists and free marketers.

The irony of libertarianism is that under the guise of championing liberty, it actually seeks to restrict it. The central premise (as far as I remember) is that an individual should not be allowed to coerce any other individual. This premise restricts the freedom of every individual.

Something is clearly betrayed about those who invented and champion such an ideology: they view coercion as their danger or weakness and recognize that it would be in their best interests to minimize it in society. It is a selfish system designed by a group of people who are in search for power and believe that they would be better off if some of the laws of physics were changed in their favor. Additionally, it helps if the system lends itself well to being marketed via prevailing moral jargon and sensibilities and sold to the sheep who might believe in it. But is it realistic to ask those who have power to willingly give it up for the sake of some other group that is trying to grab or maximize their own power? Such a thought seems to run counter to the principles observed in life up until modern man.

What I dislike about such ideals is that they attempt to limit or constrain real life via trimming it to fit a neat set of concepts which is a subset of the whole of all concepts that we have so far evolved. All of these ideals, if taken seriously, are essentially asking us to return to a more primitive state. Could that be why they all inevitably fail? And isn't real life already far superior to any ideology, with its vast phantasmagoria of players and creativity? Wouldn't the world just seem tremendously boring, limited, lackluster and handicapped if we removed, for example, coersion?

To think that such an ideal could ever be realized is to conceive of the weak conquering strength or the sick conquering health. It is the ultimate ideal of degeneracy, of stagnating humanity, of us ceasing to change and grow in unpredictable ways, of ending the evolution of mankind. The world and its great mystery would finally be "solved". We could no longer consider ourselves spiritually or philosophically "alive" under such a condition. Would anyone with an ounce of power in real life, anyone who enjoys life and judges it positively, actually push for such an ideal? Perhaps it could be met with the aid of some great accident or stupidity, but otherwise it seems unlikely. The driving force behind these ideologies in the real world is at best greed and deception, or at worst naive infatuation and stupidity.

All of this is not to say that these ideologies are not valuable (to the contrary), or that we should not consider more practical implementations (or perhaps intelligent variations) of them. But I suspect that for anyone to have a hope of a successful practical implementation, they must first grasp the bigger picture and have the clarity to focus on the right problems. But I'm starting to ramble....

Returning to the topic of libertarianism: the illusion of freedom in life is certainly very tiny, such that no intelligent person has honestly believed in it for over a century. An ideology that chooses that as its starting point can be viewed comically.

The irony of libertarianism is that under the guise of championing liberty, it actually seeks to restrict it. The central premise (as far as I remember) is that an individual should not be allowed to coerce any other individual. This premise restricts the freedom of every individual. Blah, blah, self-contradicting blah after blah after blah with some Nietzschean blah on top.

You have written some of the worst, self-contradicting logic-salad paragraphs I have ever attempted to read. Well done, sir! Quick, get a job in the Obama 'administration'.

"What you have written above is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever read. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone on this blog is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

PS: Points that would have been awarded for actually spelling phantasmagoria properly are withdrawn for obviously having no idea what it means

PPS: Please learn to spell coercion properly before making the concept a centerpoint of your gibberish

Proof that ZH doesn't need arguments, rebuttals, intelligence, critical thinking, creativity, or anything like that. As long as we all believe in the common witch hunt against communists/TPTB/cronies/etc, we can all feel good about ourselves. Every day we sign on to receive our heavily biased dosage of articles that affirm our world view. Anyone who dares question our common beliefs shall be down-voted to oblivion!

i don't know that people should be 'unfree' but do agree by now that an 'earth without coercion' is probably a pipe dream. so the idea of 'freedom' is an ideal. one can carry it in their heart, but probably never realize it in the 'real world'. basically, 'if it isn't one thing, it's another; it's always something.' 'frictionless' living seems impossible here. i would posit that it is possible to 'take chances in life', but to actually be 'free'? no. the only freedom is in motionlessness. once things start moving, it's a world of risk/reward/pain.

libertarianism, or freedom, is not about an earth without the use of force, but a small set of ethical principles that guide the use of force in a way that lets humans strive. forget what he mumbled...

No "ism" is perfect, but Capitalism beats Socialism by a long shot--there is really no comparison.

There are a few reasons why this is so. Hannan mentions a few in his speech. But the biggest reason Capitalism always wins is "dog eat dog competition". Paradoxically, this is the facet of Capitalism that Socialists always rail against, denoubcing it as "inefficient" and "unjust".

In the Socialist (or Communist) economy, almost all economic decisions are made by a bureaucracy of central planners. They reason that if the top planners are "The Best And The Brightest" (TBATB), then they will make the best, most efficient decisions for the society as a whole. Even if we accept that the [often false] premise that the ones calling the shots are indeed TBATB, the obstacles of information and time will always prevent them from making the best decisions. To make the right decisions, you need accurate fresh information. But his takes time to collect, process and study--anywhere from weeks or months to years, even with the latest information technology. By the time that happens, the information will likely be stale. Furthermore, the processing of that information may introduce bias by those charged with performing that task. In addition, we all know that TBATB at the top will have their own biases and be subject to political pressure. As a result, the decisions made will always be suboptimal. And then there is the question that the chosen economic "winners" will actually be able to execute the decisions in an effective manner. As Hannan points out, more often than not, in Socialsm/Communism, the winners are often selected by politics and bootlicking.

With "Dog Eat Dog" (DED) Capitalism, you have thousands of companies competing in the actual economy, not some theoretical model. Many approaches will fail, many others will succeed moderately, but a few will succeed spectacularly. The later will be imitated, refined, and improved. Only by the "wasteful" process trying a myriad of different approaches, will you find the ones that are most opimal. Most of these strategies are ones that even the supposed TBATB would not have dreamed of. It is "wasteful"? In a way, but only by such massive, concurrent experimentation can you discover what actually works in practice. And while it may result in "inequity", it better serves society and, as a result, raises the overall standard of living. I would forcefully argue that standard of living is a better measure of social progress than "inequity" ever will be.

That in a nutshell, is why DED Capitalism succeeds, while Socialsm, Communism, and even Crony Capitalism fail.

DED capitalism is certainly not sustainable, so if that's what you mean by "succeeds", I doubt that is true. "Crony" capitalism is going to evolve from it every time. It's irrational for those in power to limit themselves for the good of everyone else. Capitalism is very competitive. To throw out the rule books is simply another advance in competitive strategy. If those in power were extremely brainwashed, it might be able to hold together for a few generations, maybe?

Crony capitalism comes about when some of the "winners" from DED capitalism get too big. After a while, they figure out its easier to make profits from buying political favors than actually innovating. In the end, though, politics isn't always enough--sometimes the TBTF companies end up failing anyway. In a DED system, its not he big that eat the small, its the fast that eat the slow. When American society ossfies enough and that stops happening, we are all in trouble.

The isms all take the focus away from the key issue of where the power lies and so can be said to be one of the strategies the elite use to hide their power. The key rule with power is actually fairly simple. The more centralised power is the more oppresssive the state, the more it is sent to the fringes the healthier the state. Decentralised power, where the government fears the people seems to be best and isms become irrelevant in this context.

Ayn Rand pulled the covers on Statism years ago with surgical precision like no other. It's mind boggling how a populace can be conned so easily! They haven't the criticle thinking skills to even understand what their doing to themselves, absolutely tragic!

"A statist system—whether of a communist, fascist, Nazi, socialist or “welfare” type—is based on the . . . government’s unlimited power, which means: on the rule of brute force. The differences among statist systems are only a matter of time and degree; the principle is the same. Under statism, the government is not a policeman, but a legalized criminal that holds the power to use physical force in any manner and for any purpose it pleases against legally disarmed, defenseless victims.

Nothing can ever justify so monstrously evil a theory. Nothing can justify the horror, the brutality, the plunder, the destruction, the starvation, the slave-labor camps, the torture chambers, the wholesale slaughter of statist dictatorships."

The dumb shits that want to believe and blame the rich and corporations are playing into the hands of the real perpetrator, the Government! In the next few years we're going to see grass root uprisings against Government corruption like we've never seen before, it's coming and it ain't going to be pretty!

I think you got it all right except for the last part. The uprisings are not going to be against the government but against the last vestiges of freedoms and personal property ownership. The government itself will stoke those uprisings but there will then be a backlash. That is when all hell breaks loose.

Sure does! It's an easy life when you have gov't backing you all all the way with QE and whatever tax-paid for bailout there is. Privatize the profits, socialize the losses and sing about how great a capitalist you are.

Haven't you heard the news? In North American and most of the world, voters who aren't disenfranchised by electronic voting, have a choice between the left and the left of center. The right died with central banking, "progressive" taxation, bailouts and LIBOR type cronyism.

Now when do the reds get bayonets in the throat? Why the fuck are these pseudo-corporation CEO's like (ex, fill in the blank) __Monsanto__ not eating lead, made in the USA, from the vantage point of a coffin?

Communism requires "shared" values. As you say, it works in small homogeneous groups where the people feel connected. Every communist attempt has required the elimination of all non adopters or re-education of those deemed salvageable. They understand this problem well and are now trying to mold us, condition us to accept their template. Breaking down racial and sexual differences, trying to convince us we are all the same, while also dividing and pitting us against each other for the sake of retaining their power. For their plans to work millions upon millions will need to die. Yet it will still fail. Tyranny will be the ultimate solution, as it always has been.

Precisely. There's a documentary on Netflix about the kibbutz movement in Israel called "Inventing Our Life." One scene in that movie hammers this point home. A younger member of a large kibbutz talks about when he was in the military and getting paid fairly well, he started to feel like it was unfair that he worked 12 hour days and turned his paycheck over to the kibbutz, while "some guy" worked for a small number of hours in the dining hall and received the same income for his efforts.

Communism works in families, and perhaps sometimes even in large extended families, but if the group size breaches its Dunbar capacity, then "some guy" syndrome will doom the effort.

I appreciate your attempt at constructive criticism, but you inferred way too much about what I'm "expounding" through my snark. To be clear, I wasn't "making fun" of my own personal admiration of those who are doing their best to be "in the world but not of it."

In Plymouth religious communism lasted one winter, and the food did not magically appear, by Divine Providence. If you want to eat you have to work. In Jamestown, the fortune-seeking third sons of oligarchs didn't believe in work, they actually ate each other. Sixty survived before Gov De laWarre showed up with supplies. It's not like we haven't tried this stuff. As a friend who grew up in the Ukraine tells it, "we understood the theory and we lived the implementation. Misery." -That, in the richest farm region of the world.

If Hillary and her Democratic Party really want to demonstrate their mental fitness, they can start by naming one single new economic idea that they've brought to the table in the last seventy years. And if they can't, working Americans will ask themselves whether they can afford another eight years of 19th century economics from a political party whose last new idea is even older than Hillary.

Unregulated multinational corporations do not work so well sometimes either as we are seeing. Corporate monopolies eventually begin buying politicians and dictating the law. They decide what a minimum wage is. They ship jobs over sees and kill any talk of tariffs that might put a brake on unbridled capitalism.

Unfortunately those who become rich and king of the hill are most times service to self and not service to others and make up the vast multitude of people in various countries who simply want to feed their children and put a roof over their head. There were supposed to be anti-trust laws to guard against monopolies. How did that work out?

Being in favor of honest capitalism is the subject these robber barons and crash and burn looters like to avoid. When the robber barons destroyed the relatives of Jesse James because they wanted to build a railroad through the farm, was that capitalism? Capitalism works best when humans control it. We live on a slave planet where those who are barely human control it. They have built over 400 nuclear reactors and these people know virtually nothing about various planetary alignments that happen periodically, various ages if you will such as the Kali Yuga which is well known to more advanced societies such as India, the Mayans, Chinese and other societies. Of course these societies are now building power plants themselves out of sheer desperation to possess weapons to defend themselves against the west.

It is a little more complex than .... socialism does not work. Of course if you are not just spouting National Review. There is no economy or anything else without a natural enviornment.

Capitalism seems not to work. Marx was right about capitalism. Every few years the entire system crashes, and the government must bail out the capitalists, using the taxpayers' money. As the Russians now say "the communists lied about communnisn, but told the truth about capitalism."

You are confusing terms describing economic systems such as capitalism and communism with terms such as fascism that describe political systems.

The reason you are confused is because unrestricted capitalism often leads to fascism. To deflect from capitalism's obvious failures, failed capitalism must be labeled something else. Something different. This allows capitalism's supporters to claim that capitalism's failures were caused by something other than capitalism itself.

Capitalism is a tree that can bear rotten fruit, unless it is carefully pruned. Oligarchy and fascism are some of these rotten fruit. When capitalism bears these rotten fruit, then yes, capitalism has failed. The tree itself is the cause. You cannot look at the rotten fruit itself and hold the tree blameless.

Capitalism as it is practiced in the US is not capitalism and has not been for a long time. That's the point. It's easy to discredit capitalism once you've turned it half socialistic and centrally planned, you just point to the failing socialistic parts and say "see capitalism does not work."

The "failed socialist parts" you write about are actually the excesses of capitalism. Socialism wouldn't have given hundreds of billions of our dollars to Wall Street. Please quote any self-proclaimed socialist or communist stating they supported TARP. Good luck finding one because there simply isn't any.

Here in SF there are plenty of smarter socialists who outnumber libertarians whenever there is a protest against the Fed.

Thats good.

Wxcept they like free money because they like free shit.

They would replace banker fraud with politician fraud.

The commies don't like it when I remind them that free shit includes free shit for the military.

We actually had well regulated money and banking from the end of the Second Fed until Lincoln caved to the banksters and introduced greenbacks and freed the banks from controlling each other through redemtion of bank receipts.

Look up "Suffolk Bank" It worked and during that period the fate of the common man made giant strides out of eons of misery and tyranny.

I used to talk about separating money and state. Naturally, I never ggot invited back to any party.

Now I just shut up in hopes that I might get invited back and perhaps even get laid by a good looking commie.

"Socialism" means different things in different contexts. In the context of this article, it seems mainly to deal with centralized decision making, as opposed to the "liberal" idea of decision authority diffused throughout the market. In a "liberal" or "free" (I'll be overusing quotation marks tonight due to alcohol consumption) market, each actor makes decisions about production and purchasing based on the information available to him and what he peceives, in light of that information, to be his own self interest. In a "socialist" system, a central decision-making authority uses the information available to it to make those decisions on behalf of the other actors and ostensibly in the common interest. In each someone's making a decision, but who it is and on whose behalf differ. There are two major factors here that need to be considered: the quality of the information available to the decision maker, and the degree to which he or she is actually acting in the best interest of the market participants. Socialism fails when the necessary information is insufficient (like in Stalin's five-year plans) or when the central authority is actually acting on behalf of special interests ("cronyism"). Liberalism fails when market participants are ill-informed ("muppets") or when they fail to perceive their own interests ("muppets" again). Liberalism's benefit lies in individual actors' ability to recognize their own interests and research the market around them better; socialism's strength is economy of scale.

To get to the point, multinational corporations centralize decision-making abilities. They're not governments, so we don't perceive them as socialist, but they perform a similar function in that they remove some degree of freedom from the market. When they ship jobs overseas, they take away former market participants' labor and thus ability to make decisions about labor. When acting as cartels or monopolies they provide services that don't meet consumer demands while hindering potential competitors from entering the market, you end up with a third-world phone system or the cable industry's refusal to offer à la carte channels, both of which the US has had problems with in the past two decades.

Multinational corporations act in their own interest rather than the common interest, which is where they really differ from socialist governments: but the power that they exercise in controlling decision-making is comparable, albeit at a lesser scale except in extreme examples of banana republics. Their saving grace, albeit a dim one, is the possibility that their decision making abilities will be so clouded that they will fail in the marketplace and be replaced by a competitor acting on better information or more responsive to customer desires: but their ability to influence government regulation ("bribery") often defeats that mechanism. But, they do also possess the economy of scale advantage, which also plays into their hands.

The big novelty that's emerged since World War II is the ability to process data and obtain information to aid decision making. That's what enables multinational corporations and socialist governments to function, and why the NSA, the Russians' SORM, the PLA's spying, and corporate big data are so important. The fascists of WW2 tried to do the same but didn't have the technology (IBM worked for Hitler, but with punch cards). Increased information availability, both as market information and domestic surveillance, gives socialist governments and multinational corporations greater confidence in their centralizaiton of decision making. To put that in historical perspective, remember that the Roman empire had to devolve into a tetrachy because its communications prohibited a single, central ruler to effectively command such a vast domain. Likewise, the Ocean prevented the British from continuing to rule America. The dream of corporate and socialist centralizers is that technology nullifies those disadvantages.

That technology isn't going away. Neither are multinationals or socialism. I'm sorry to have to say that, but I don't see decentralization and liberalization in the future. There are no frontiers left.

One could argue that a number of the multinationals planned the second world war with the help of the (central) banks. That they've allowed the people in the west some freedom, and a higher living standard, to compete with the Soviet Union and it's satillite states, not just in the west, but in the 3rd world countries.

With another step in technology already here, moments away from mass production, in the form of robotics and artificial intelligence, there's another consequence looming over our world:In the basic strategy of (a number of) multinationals, there is no place for human labour, or intelligence.

We don't have capitalism at all, we are in a highly controlled, manipulated system, in which power over resources, is the means but also the goal. This will have the inevitable result of depletion of natural resources without the intention to keep any at a sustainable level.

People like Hannan mean well, but are stuck ideologically in the last century just like marxists are.The new difference is those that want to make this planet a habitable, free place (decentralised), and those that are working against that, because they're part of a mechanism that changed course, without them even knowing.

The emergence of political parties and organisations that do recognise this, has gone unnoticed to most.As an example I'd point at the "Party for the animals" in the Netherlands. It's both capitalist, almost libertarian it it's ideas about the influence of state, and freedom, but very weary about these same multinationals that put Hitler in power turning the planet into an uninhabitable rock. Another example is the opposition against Shale Gas in mainland Europe, as it is becoming clear, it's not about a few puffs of gas, or even profit, but has the purpose of contaminating watersupplies, aquifers, so these are rendered unusable.

Socialism is nothing but a system of coöperation turned into another control mechanism. It can therefore be observed that most socialist parties are not opposed to the far-reaching plans of the multinationals (TTIP-TAFTA, TPP), but actively involved. Just like the so called neo-liberals (like UKIP). Take notice, these are NOT libertarians in the strict meaning of the word. Hannan I see as a positive exception. These political opposites don't realise that they are both working towards their own obsolescence. Again... in the system of global control, there is eventually (in a shorter timespan then we'd expect - exponential growth in development now) no more need for human beings, workers, or any need for a service economy even...

"The new difference is those that want to make this planet a habitable, free place (decentralised),... "

When people think "centralization", they seem to think this word in economical and geographical terms only.

But when you think about it, isn't law a form of centralization (some kind of "behavioural centralization") ? Everyone has to conform to the law (theoretically). I don't know of any society that doesn't have laws in one form or another. Doesn't a society inevitably require a process of what we could describe as "centralization", one way or another ?

history shows that "law" is for the common man, not the elite of any time period..communist/national socialist/progressive/compassionate conservatives..all understand this. ask j corzine what kind of .gov he wants and he will answer "the one we got".

Bill Gates is the classic example, did Microsoft benefit in proportion to the good that software like Windows and Office did for the world? In the end it was consumers that gave therm that money, were they conned into it by an evil conglomerate or did they buy the products because they made their jobs and their lives better?

The end-consumer never really had much choice in their operating system until fairly recently. Microsoft's OS has been and largely is now bundled with PC's, so most consumers had to buy the OS with their hardware and were never faced with any choice. PC is synonymous with "Windows" for consumers; sure, Linux and BSD might exist, but they're not bundled with computers like Windows is, and most consumers will never know that they exist. The only real competition is Apple, which doesn't run on anything except Apple hardware and so isn't actually in competition: the guy buying a shiny new Dell or Lenovo or whatever can't choose MacOS. The decision to use Windows has usually been made for him by the hardware manufacturers who bundle Windows with the machine. Consumers weren't conned into using Windows: the choice was taken from them and made by the manufacturers. That's how decision-making can get centralized even in private industry.

What you're saying is you don't like the choices available to you in the market. There have always been alternatives, from Apple II to OS 2 to BeOS. Many many many of them over the years. And there are choices now. They are the ones created by consumers, who wanted Windows bundled with their PC because it was easiest and cheapest and they didn't know anything else. I'm no fan of Microsoft or Bill Gates. His tactics stunk, but on balance he did the world a lot of good by keeping costs competitive and allowing many people who don't care about which OS to do more with less.i never have liked the choices I had in the computer market, they were seldom the best, but they were the choices consumers made and I can't blame Bill Gates for that.

BeOS couldn't run on commodity PC hardware until late in its lifespan, and even then it only supported a very limited set of hardware. Apple never did until OSX. Niche operating systems that can't run on general PC hardware are not in the same market as Microsoft and were not competing with them (Apple still doesn't directly compete with MS in that sense, as OSX can't run on a Dell or HP or Lenovo, at least not out of the box). IBM's OS2 was the closest thing to an actual commercial competitor in MS' market (the PC segment running Intel or equivalent processors), but manufacturers entered into agreements with MS to bundle Windows with new hardware. That means that consumers were not given a choice: when they purchased hardware, they got the OS with it, like it or not. The manufacturers centralized that choice. If MS had had to compete with IBM on a level playing field where both operating systems were totally separate purchases from the hardware, and if MS still won, then you could say that MS beat them due to decentralized choice in a liberal/free market -- but that's not what happened. The hardware manufacturers entered into agreements with MS to remove decision making from the consumers, for the corporations' interests (and to IBM's detriment). Giving the consumer a choice would mean selling them only what the hardware manufacturer made/assembled, without any software (OS and the usual bloatware), much like a car company selling just the car without a long-term subscription to a particular gasoline provider (surprised Mercedes hasn't done that yet, considering how much crap they now bundle with cars).

Bundling of services not produced by the manufacturer is fundamentally a way of reducing consumer choice, much as cable's bundling of channels, none of whose content is produced by the cable company, reduces the consumer's ability to choose which channels to buy and thus distorts the marketplace and the information on consumer demand, which is why television is a vast wasteland: it's not because people like and actively choose to purchase Lifetime.

The same is true of politics: parties bundle positions on issues to reduce voter (consumers of government) choice. If you want party X's position on economic issues, but party Y's position on social issues, and party X and Y take opposite sites of each issue so that they're inversely correlated, then a two-party system does not represent your demand efficiently. If you vote for party Y for social issues, you give up the ability to express your economic views. It would be more representative of the marketplace of ideas to have more single-issue plebescites/referenda and less parliamentary or assembly based legislative action, or to devolve group decision making to more local units of government so that people could vote with their feet by forming communities of likeminded citizens. The same information technology that powers surveillance should also be able to cope with single-issue referenda and more direct democracy, or at least it would if we could trust the vote-counters.

Microsoft is a classic example of out of control capitalism. Microsoft required computer manufactures to put the Windows operating system on every computer they sold. If a consumer wanted a different operating system, then they could erase the Windows operating system they were forced to purchase, and suffer the added expense of purchasing another operating system. Microsoft also engaged in other illegal activities with Office.

The non-political reality is that there is a balance to be struck between capitalism and socialism. In an ideally moral world, socialism would actually work. However, we don't live in that world. Instead, we live in a world that is ruled by both morals and by human greed. Thus, we must strike a balance between socialism and capitalism. Where that balance lies is the challenge. I don't think we have found it and don't expect that balance to be stumbled upon in my lifetime. However, we must recognize that there is a balance to be found. We cannot exist purely under one system or the other. Individually, they are equally fallible.

socialism fails because Stalin proved it could be usurped easily by a single Oligarch and controlled simply by fear and paying off the few who would exercise the violence to control the mob. Capitlaism is a little trickier as it formulates the rise of multiple Oligarchs who then learned quickly to work together rather than separately to control the mob. The current nSSA/uSSA model of capitalism is the pinnacle of their success to date. Full slavery and open anal savagery followed by public drinking of virgin blood will pretty much be their testament to full capitalistic glory......

not sure the rothchilds would agree with your r'tard cabernet 2014, just cuz you dribble into a cup don't make it whine......you're wheezing from the beating you're taking, take a knee......it's the joint half way down your one leg....

to be this bitter you must be uglier than you are stupid. sorry I know I know, "learning disability". my gf just got home. I'm going to fuck the shit out of her while you slam your head on the keyboard some more.

No, no; can't keep the morons off the site; there wouldn't be any site. It's the internet, remember. No need to study, think, do arithmetic, learn anything; just start explaining the one and only truth about anything and everything as it pops into your head.

"Oligarchs" are, by definition, a group of people (not just one) who make decisions instead of many. It comes from the ancient Greek oligos meaning "few" and arche meaning "power" (or "beginning"). Ancient political philosophers considered that there were three main kinds of government, each of which had two forms, supposedly a better and worse version:

Rule by one person: that's monarchy (monarchia) in its better form and tyranny (tyrannis) in its worse. Stalin wasn't an oligarch but a tyrant. Queen Elizabeth isn't either, because she doesn't have any power.

Rule by a group: in its positive form, aristocracy (aristocratia) is "rule by the best people" where "best" means morally superior and wiser, not wealthier or defined by blood and birth; while oligarchy (oligarchia) is "rule by a few (who are not the best)." Here some might add "plutocracy" (ploutocratia), "rule by the wealthy (who are also not necessarily the best)."

Rule by everyone: democracy (democratia) is the better form, as opposed to mob-rule or ochlocracy (?chlocratia). The Free Shit Army is an example of ochlocracy. Democracy is generally window-dressing for oligarchy: even in ancient Athens, the most power exerted in the assemblies belonged to the wealthy who could buy the votes of the urban poor or afford to spend their time prosecuting and debating while the middle class was busy working the fields.

In theory, communism should be democratic, perhaps with some aristocratic organization to aid the transition to a full democracy (which was supposed to be an inherent part of communism); it never worked out that way in practice, and instead it devolved into oligarchy and tyranny. Modern Russia, China and the US are oligarchies and perhaps plutocracies (try finding someone in power in any of them who doesn't belong to the top 10% in terms of wealth) and always were; their democratic window-dressing is just wearing thinner now than it did fifty years ago.

This is all because both the capitalist and socialist systems we use involve a central state with coercive power over the individual. Both are forced participation versions.

I agree with the speakers premise that the key is removing the force and replacing it with voluntary choice. Within a Libertarian National framework you could have voluntary communist regions all the way through to voluntary unregulated free for all ... with all the variations in between. So long as all were prohibited by the Federal gov from forcing people to remain .... a balance would be found, the best sytem would prosper, people would reorganize geographically based on their free choice of political persuasion. If you start to resent it you choose where you want to go and are free to do so.

It has nothing to do with greed. It's common sense and basic survival. If you work harder, they want it to continue. If your work is equal to the others, they ignore you. It's an extension of the goose that laid the golden eggs. You produce more, they want more. What would the very wise man do: work harder or relax?

vs. "capitalism" which picks the winners at a secret meeting on an island by a select few. Both are easily captured, the oligarchs will always tilt the table away from letting things "happen on their own"........you sound almost child-like in your naivety

The oligarchs are stealing everybodys money! sniffle sniffle sniffle. boo hoo Mommy mommy, the oligarchs are mean!!! If I can just get enough of my loser friends together we might be able to afford the bus fare to drive to DC and have a protest against the oligarchs. sniffle sniffle sniffle

And we'll start a union so when we smoke dope on the job and drink a fifth of jack during our lunch break the mean oligarchs won't be able to fire us. And we will get healthcare. I'm to big of a pussy to get it on my own...

Socialism works in various contiguous areas where people share the same background and beliefs, they do not consider others as invaders interlopers or people who where place here after the last communist invasion etc. You might take note that the west is striving hard to mingle people together with no historical connect and absolutely despise each other. This will lead to ethnic strife disintegration and world control. It is very well planned. So yeah it is probably a bit late fort "socialism". We are in the end game.

No, they are not equally fallible. Socialism has been a complete failure everywhere and anytime it has been tried. Capitalism in it's truest form has always succeded. You think it fails because lazy people that enjoy entertainment over working end up with nothing.

Capitalism fails for the same reason socialism fails - human nature. Eventually someone gets greedy. The difference is that with capitalism it take time for the greedy to get control while with socialism it is usually the greedy who get control from the start. Capitalism have a much better timeline, for a while.

Nothing else works, because nothing else but better organized crime can displace organized crime. (See my comment below.) The ONLY solutions are to continue to have to muddle through the madness of the dynamic equilibria of different systems of organized lies operating robberies. Better equilibria are theoretically possible. No systems of lies operating robberies is absolutely impossible.

Since most of the controlled opposition proposes the impossible ideals that no systems of organized crime should exist at all, that always backfires in the real world, resulting in even more unbalanced and worse systems of organized lies, operating robberies.

Organized lies, operating robberies, "works" because those are the ONLY things that human beings ever actually do, after one defines them to be separate from their environment. As soon as we name human beings, then they must necessarily operate as robbers in their environment. Groups of human beings are necessarily gangs of robbers. Governments are the ways that groups of human beings have organized themselves. Better government is possible, as better organized crime, which is better balanced. No government is NOT possible, and impossible ideals aimed at that goal always backfire badly, by enabling the worst forms of organized crime to triumph, at least in the shorter term.

Socialism doesn't work because the productive hard workers suffer when fellow workers despise them and their reward is incommensurate with their effort. Socialism doesn't reward achievement, it rewards need. So, there's more need, less achievement. A Hero of the People's Republic Shirt makes one a target.

The indians had an answer for that also, the hunters gave a slab of buffalo to the older people who were no longer "productive". All of this took place without destroying the natural world. Throw down that copy of national review.

Technology has, but sociology hasn't. Tribal living probably wouldn't have produced the iPad or the cell phone, but tribal wars also didn't have the capacity to kill billions of people.

The question is - how much technology is enough? Do we have enough now that we could actualy start to change our social structure back towards a model that's a better fit for our neurological limitations? Are we even willing to try?

I'm not optimistic that changes that radical are possible - at least not until after something very, very bad happens to reduce the population significantly. But it seems clear that there's not much future to the path we're on.

Society has moved on, wearing Brookes Brothers suits while pissing in their own drinking water, dumping sewage into it and wondering why the Pacific ocean, fish and all are radioactive. Progress is our most important product. Always be closing.

Sitting Bull once said the western world suffers from a disease of "wanting too acquire too many things".

The average person in the western world is willing to live in one of our larger cities, indulge in the rat race, and acquire the financial means to move into the country side and build a small dwelling where they can be close to what is left of nature, fish, perhaps hunt a bit. In other words they seek the life style of the American indian, the people their ancestors destroyed with small pox blankets. Never mind those who perished in a concrete jungle or salvation army camp who were not as fortunate as them.

The west is meeting their karma, as God cannot be mocked. Greaty advice came from Russell Means before he died in an address to all Americans and it was simple. "Welcome to the reservation!"

Got all your $1,500 in life savings in a bank checking account earning .01%, huh? If I were you I'd be bitter to. You could have turned that $1,500 into $2,500 and retired early if you weren't so stupid!

....you are the classic 'merikan.......mocked around the world daily.....spoon fed your own stoopidity by other 'merikans in the biggest circle jerk of herd mentality human civilization will ever know. You are the crowning jewel in the nSSA/uSSA, proof that.......stoopid NEVER dies, it just mutates.

please don't assume either of these theories has ever been actualized, they haven't.... they're just ideas. Practice of the last 2000 years has shown neither has been used in any concrete fashion so why bother pontificate about something that hasn't happened nor will llkely ever happen?

this isn't the 1950's the only dominant form of socialism in existence is coordinated central banking, or rather 'bankstering'.

the debasement goes on unchecked with bankers just thinking they can continue to accelerate the looting because those who would or could organize resistence to it are extremely few in number and easily identified and then neutralized through a card-deck of strategies.

daniel hannan is a dick bag who didn't speak about bankstering once in his speech. at least nigel farage speaks about this (despite being in the pocket of the boe as well .

the real qeustion being , what is the better alternative to coordinated central banking. the answer is probably nothign, but if so, whatever it is requires lots of war.

somehow anarchists don't see that when they get what they want, war breaks out as naturally as it does when they don't get what they want. power vaccums don't just resolve to peaceful failed capitlist minarchism.

there really is a dilemma of leadership. of course the banksers want you to think that the world will end if they are dethroned. it won't. but there will be problems. which is why people correctly assess the financial hostage crisis for what it is. a threat of something worse.

The only antidote to rampant self-preservation and thirst for control, which are able to disguise themselves as an "ism" only when there is critical mass, is to address and humiliate the corrupt directly and publicly.

While I can see how you might see self preservation morphing into a thirst for control, I see nothing wrong with self preservation. There is as much to fear from rampant "sacrifice" collectively imposed on society, be it through war or destructive economic practices. The danger is from any collective action which redistributes power, wealth and liberty using democracy as a tool of tyranny. Collectivism is just the ultimate form of organization, which begins as simple democracies and large business/corporate entities. Freedom should be the goal and that can not come about through the elimination of the freedoms of others. There is no perfection on earth. We must prioritize freedom over security as security is based on perceptions of fear that can only be alieviated through the elimination of the rights of others. Just say no.